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As far as I could tell the moderators the StackExchange sites have power to unilaterally close and reopen questions.

Now without going into anything specific how much power does a moderator have over reopening a his/her question that was closed by the community vote?

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    I would imagine nothing stops them from doing so. If you suspect abuse you can always post on meta or email team@stackexchange.com. Everything is always audited, so they couldn't ever hide the fact that they reopened their own question.
    – Servy
    Apr 2, 2013 at 17:05
  • I would expect moderators not having lots of community closed questions. :-)
    – Bo Persson
    Apr 2, 2013 at 18:54
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    @BoPersson No they don't.
    – Karlson
    Apr 2, 2013 at 18:57

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They can easily do that, they power is not restricted in any way on their own posts.

But in general moderators would not use their powers in such a way. Overriding the community on closing their own question would in most cases be an abuse of the moderator power.

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    Definitely. For example, when we encounter flags on our own posts, we tend to ask another mod to handle it.
    – Andrew Barber
    Apr 2, 2013 at 17:15
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    @AndrewBarber As of right now I don't know of any instances of abuse, however, in my experience if the potential for abuse exists eventually it will be exploited.
    – Karlson
    Apr 2, 2013 at 18:43
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    @Karlson There are many ways a moderator could abuse their power, many of them far more destructive than reopening their own questions. The protection against this is that most moderator actions are public, and those that aren't are still subject to the review of the SE community team. Any significant moderator abuse of power would be shortlived and would end with the removal of the diamond.
    – Mad Scientist - on strike
    Apr 2, 2013 at 19:18

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